2nd May

We set to this morning reinstalling the stainless steel
that had been removed so that Alico could work on the varnish. Although we had
suspected the position yesterday we confirmed this morning that the charger for
the new drill was faulty straight out of the box. Hopefully Joe will be able to
get another to us with the next shipment. Nevertheless the power in the batteries
was sufficient to carry us through the day and importantly screwing all the
stainless steel back in place which was completed in a couple of hours. Jay was
back with the cockpit engine control cover which he has now completed. It will
need a coat of varnish at some stage as will the for’d dorade. We then
moved on to servicing the genoa tracks and the associated genoa cars. Good job
we did this as there was a large accumulation of varnish in the bearings which
took some cleaning out prior to greasing and reinstalling. Must remember to
tell Alico that these are easily removed prior to varnishing so he can avoid it
in future – though I suspect much of it came from prior work. There had
been a lot of rain overnight and when we looked at the dinghy it had 6 inches
of water in it so we diverted for a while to pump it out and keep it afloat! As
we had made a mess in the cockpit already we decided to install the dodgers
which took several hours as we took the opportunity of correcting the errors
made by the manufacturer in Fort Lauderdale - for example two of the zips had
been installed back to front which meant that the bit you get hold of to
operate the zip was actually inside the seam. We unpicked the stitching and
reversed them before stitching them back up again. Once the dodgers were in place
it was possible to finish installing the EPIRB and lifesaving equipment around
the cockpit. We then took the headlining down in the pilothouse so that we
could service the fairleads which are mounted above. Good job we did this as
several of the bolts were not properly secured. Whilst doing this we noticed
that the port after pilothouse window which is brand new had a crack. This is
the third time we have had this problem and are now going to try and source
some Lexan to replace the glass. This is another of the famous and expensive
jobs carried out in Fort Lauderdale – every job we had done there, apart
from one, has had to done again. We were talking to Mike Smith about this
problem and he was saying that Florida has now developed an appalling
reputation even within the USA for poor quality workmanship on boats –
much of which was brought up to New England to be fixed. I have to say we all
wish we had never been near the place. Mike got tied up on another boat so we
did not get the bilge pump monitor installed and that is now scheduled for 0600
tomorrow. Once that has been done we might declare tomorrow a holiday as we are
starting to run our of steam and will need to be in top shape for Tuesdays lift
out .Monday is also a bank holiday here but we will need to prepare the boat
for Tuesday morning when we will have to be at the dock for 0700. |